<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>a woman missing a woman that misses her back by orphan_account</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23387500">a woman missing a woman that misses her back</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account'>orphan_account</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Portrait de la jeune fille en feu | Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>:(, Compulsory Heterosexuality, Contemporary AU, F/F, there's an unnamed man mentioned because, this is just me being sad</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 15:28:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,018</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23387500</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"Marianne would have died with her, killed for her, because when loves don't die they kill, and loves that kill can never really die."</p><p>(marianne's thoughts seven years after they part ways. set in today's world but it's irrelevant to the sadness).</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Héloïse/Marianne (Portrait of a Lady on Fire)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>a woman missing a woman that misses her back</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>so everything i write abt portrait is really gay and messy and this turned out suprisingly decent, so i'm posting it. really it's just a sad lesbian rambling</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <span>“When did this go wrong?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Marianne can't tell him with precision but she knows the exact moment. Somewhere along the line she found herself carrying reusable grocery bags; she had picked out his shampoo and was fearing the possibility of meeting his gaze, because they walked in silence and every time he was left alone with his thoughts he would go back to the past. She didn't want to see the tears in his eyes as they passed that one neighbour with the apple pies, she didn't want to lay on the couch once they got home. She finally realized this had never been the plan, this civilized love that plants tomatoes and shares a meal. She didn't want February 14s and happy birthdays, always saving up in case tomorrow ever came. Don't ask her to have money at the end of the month, eat an apple a day, turn on the oven because they're having lasagna. She never wanted him to kiss her scar, never wanted Paris under rain or Venice “without him”.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When she peels oranges there’s a bomb inside her pocket in case the blade isn't sharp enough; he puts gloves on to wash two plates. Everything dies and everything runs and everything is transformed and nothing remains once you turn your back, but he’s scared of rules breaking him and she’s tired of telling him he needs to be brave enough to fight his own shadow. Sometimes she can tolerate it, be at peace with their peace, but then the night comes and when she looks up at the moon Héloïse is all she sees. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Don't wait for her at the courthouse. Don't tell her ‘let's start over’. She doesn't want to be either free or busy, late or asleep, prideful or merciless. She doesn't want to know why he did it, she doesn't want it with or without him. What she wants from him and his sad eyes, is nothing more than to die for her like she would have.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And Marianne would have died with her, killed for her, because when loves don't die they kill, and loves that kill can never really die. Infinite as death is every day she doesn’t see her. She lives with the memories of every second they spent together, scared of those she’ll never get back because they’ve drowned in adrenaline. They’re so few compared to the years she’s dedicated to him, so insignificant on paper and for accounting purposes, but if she were to scribble down everything she’s ever lived, she would die before getting halfway through Héloïse, skipping through all the desert that comes to mind when she hears his name. Sometimes this thought makes her so guilty her shoulders hurt. Sometimes she counts and she counts again and she can’t believe it’s been seven years. Seven years sewed together from patches. Seven years of happiness in a shining armour that left before she arrived, zero tangos and seven centuries without a letter dripping with lust. Today someone won a match, maybe that team or the one he hates. Seven years of badly healed scars, most of them on her face. Seven years and not one laugh, but a million happy days. Seven lives is what it would have taken her to count Héloïse’s lashes and then lean back, get confused and find a ring, learn that the world might not approve. She owes her a dance and a few kisses, worth more than peruvian gold, than those dreams that could be hers, than the woman who cheated with a demon. Her bones were her skin's antidote, her tears the nails on Marianne’s cross. A virgin wind lifts skirts as she goes, from Spain to the master bedroom, searching for something to keep the world turning like she doesn’t already know what she needs. What a headache, what a hustle, what a sway. Such ruin, what a letdown, what a day. What a state of mind, as feverish as a love letter from jail, as empty as the island after Robinson leaves, trembling behind the steel curtain, burning like ice somewhere in Chernobyl.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She never lets herself wonder what Héloïse is feeling right now: no answer would ever soothe her unless it came from those lips or was carved into a tree, yet every time she turns the light off she can hear what she’s thinking. Maybe they own the dark. Maybe silence is theirs, too, and the dogs that bark outside, the nostalgia and this wireless desire that makes her blood boil when wind hits her skin. She swears that feeling is her, coming to grab her from behind, poke her ribs with a paintbrush and bend everything out of shape until the air is so hot there’s no choice but to take their clothes off.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Marianne always thought she’d live until the charm of living wore off; now she thinks she might die from boredom. Nothing is more than a tale, jewels and magic, dust near the bridge. There’s no mouse and there’s no cat, there are no caves to be explored. She can’t stand the light in the hallway, she can’t stand the music he plays. She can’t stand the sketches under her bed, buried inside the heaviest of boxes but still present all the time, burning a hole in the back of her mind that sooner or later might turn into a portal to a time she didn’t need to imagine adventures. She can’t stand never painting her, out of fear of what would come out, because no scenario soothes her and they’re all worse than the last. She can’t stand how oblivious he is to her anger, but if he ever noticed she wouldn’t be able to stand it either. She can’t stand thinking about it, because even if her tears are sweet, even if canvases burn, even if she goes a week without sleeping and even if every single cell in her body feels something different, it’s really not that complicated. It’s as simple as death, as simple as a woman missing a woman that misses her back.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>stay home</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>